I have never seen a copyright infringing downloader re-sell the latest Britney album as his own creation. When you can show me that happening, maybe your simple question can get the answer it deserves.
It doesn't matter what someone does after the copyright infringement. The point is that in both cases, intellectual property is being taken against the spirit of the license it was released under. Some of us simply like to point out how hypocritical it is of Slashdot and its readers to be up in arms over intellectual property law and prop up piracy at most every opportunity, then turn around and get angry when GPL code is taken. If piracy is okay or is a "gray area," then so is violating the GPL.
Office, Visual Studio, Internet Explorer and plain ol' Windows
I use Office 2000, which uses normal looking widgets. However, I have seen Office XP/2003, which uses the exact same widgets Windows has, but with some outlines drawn around them.
Visual Studio? The same. And it didn't even do it before Visual Studio 2003.
Internet Explorer? Here, you're either trolling or confused because Internet Explorer uses native Windows widgets.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Windows apps all use the same native widgets. And by the way, even the apps that draw their own widgets aren't loading entire GUI libraries into memory to do it, like in the OSS world, which was another part of my point. Why do I have to load up four ways to manage button widgets in RAM just to get work done because people want "choice"? I just want to get my work done without losing all my memory to the reinvented (and reinvented, and reinvented) wheel.
Then how can you speak honestly about the experience of using Windows? Copy-paste is universally acknowledged as a major issue on OSS desktops. I experience the problem all the time when trying to work with multiple apps. Never have the problem in Windows or OS X.
No. NT was intended only for businesses and servers. The consumer product was always 9x. With the introduction of XP, Microsoft has unified the codebase.
Anybody who says Windows is easier to use than Linux is simply wrong.
Look, I despise Windows, too. But even an objective examination of the ease of use between Windows and Linux has Windows far ahead, from widget consistency to copy-paste to app installation/uninstallation to system updates.
I never said KDE was a fork of GNOME or vice versa. I was just illustrating that having parallel platforms stagnates progress. The point is the same.
Having several different libraries that implement widgets have nothing to do with forking. And at least Linux has only two big ones. I rarely use Windows anymore, but each time I do I'm amazed at the non-standard look of every damned application. I mean, for some bizarre reason every firewall, antivirus, IM program, office suite, etc. has to have its own widgets, and MS applications aren't an exception.
That's true, but it's nowhere near how bad it is in Linux. If your only standard for comparison is the way Windows looks, desktop Linux is never going to improve. And regardless, the vast majority of Windows apps DO look the same and use native widgets, have buttons in the same place, have the same menu items, use the same keyboard shortcuts, and can copy-paste damn near anything between each other. The Linux offerings don't come close, because they won't standardize.
Because enough people switch and use the fork that now we have yet another platform we have to support. The community's energy and momentum is spread thin on countless source forks rather than focused on a few really great projects.
Each claim should be evaluated regardless of messenger. If the claims don't make sense, there's no reason to immediately dismiss them because you know you're right. Instead, address them. Yes, there are cases where Linux is insecure and unscalable. There are cases where it is more secure and more scalable.
We should adopt more balanced opinions around here. Unfortunately, what will happen is that people will counter the article's reactionary opinion with an opposite reactionary opinion.
What "risks" are Open Source taking? What things am I risking by running Debian?
In fact, it's a negative thing to say using OSS is taking a risk. Pointy haired bosses don't want to take risks, they want to use what's safe and reliable.
"Risk-takers" is not the image you want to portray of the OSS community. I get what you were trying to say, but there should be a different choice of words.
Forks ARE bad things. The mantra of "choice" isn't applicable to every situation. Standardizing on a platform is difficult enough in the Linux world. Forking things whenever one of the devs feels wronged (usually how these things get started) just increases the confusion and non-interoperability between multiple platforms. It's one more to support and worry about.
Desktop Linux has, for the most part, stagnated because KDE and GNOME won't merge into one mega-standard. Instead, we must continue to install both entire desktop environments just to comfortably run each other's apps. It's absolutely ridiculous the way the wheel gets reinvented several times over. If you're running GNOME, a KDE app, Mozilla Firefox, and OpenOffice, you've got at least four major libraries now sitting in your memory, all doing the same things but with different code, implementing their own GUI widgets. You're never going to have desktop standards that way.
Apple gets a lot of grief here and I guess elsewhere for their 1970s or 1980s attitude towards mice design and usage, and I think they deserve every bit of it.
It's not "1970s or 1980s attitude," it's basic ideas of usability and simplicity. I have a two-button mouse that I use for OS X. Honestly, I never use the right-mouse button because the menus it brings up are always available at the top menu, anyway.
It's not a point against it, it's a point in its favor that OS X is so advanced you only need one button to use it and accomplish the same thing that takes Windows two buttons and Linux three.
The story says "jaws will drop." Apple will probably have the left button take up most of the mouse, with the right moust button being shifted more to the side.
I wouldn't be surprised if a scrolling track pad was added on the left of the mouse where the thumb rests, because an ugly "scroll wheel" on top wouldn't be aesthetic. Not to mention how unusable it is. Two-button mice strain my tendons, especially that scroll wheel. I actually prefer one-button mice when I can use them because I can easily rest my finger in the center of the mouse. Your hand feels amazingly more comfortable when you do that. And, of course, Ctrl-click does the same damn thing. But the point is you don't even need the right mouse button on OS X because the functionality is exposed elsewhere. I think it's a point in OS X's favor that it's so functional, you don't even need two buttons to use it--just one.
Expect Apple computers to continue to ship with one-button mice by default. The two-button mouse will just be another upgrade option when you buy it online, or something you can pick up on your way out of the retail store.
No so fast. IE7 still won't be standards-compliant. That won't matter to most end-users, of course, but it matters to me as a web developer.
From article:
Partner sources say Microsoft is wavering on the extent to which it plans to support CSS2 with IE 7.0. Developers have been clamoring for Microsoft to update its CSS support to support the latest W3C standards for years. But Microsoft is leaning toward adding some additional CSS2 support to IE 7.0, but not embracing the standard in its entirety, partners say.
My only question is...um, why the fuck not? Even Apple's Safari is already plunging ahead with preliminary CSS3 support.
I predict IE7's "additional support for CSS2" will really just mean fixing the major box model and table width bugs and not changing anything else.
Thanks for playing the role of "Angry, Anti-social, Elitist Perl Snob." The Slahsdot user known as hyperstation alone determines who is a programmer and who is not in this world, and goddammit, if you've read a PHP book, you're still not a programmer! You're not supposed to learn anything by reading about it in a book. Instead, you must know it through Slashdot discussions and online tutorials, or you're just not a "real" programmer. For instance, I learned Perl through osmosis by sleeping on an O'Reilly book. Brothers and sisters, I have arrived.
But if you use the Bittorrent network, anyone else could grab those files that you're downloading, without having paid for them. Granted, they'd be DRMed, but I doubt the studios will go for having their DRM files floating around all over the place instead of directly to the person they sold it to.
Basically, what I'm asking is how they would be able to implement a payment system through Bittorrent rather than just throwing DRM-ed files out onto the network for everyone to hack at.
It might, however, be just what movie studios and record labels need to market and distribute their own content efficiently on the Web
Now why would it be in their best interest to distribute movies and music so that everyone else could get it without compensating them for it? Is this more of the silly "free advertising" argument? Seriously, how would you expect them to get paid if they did that? I guess a recording artist is expected to spend three months renting out a studio and equipment, just to have the music blasted onto Bittorrent where he won't get paid for his work.
Are you telling me the Bittorrent system has DRM or some other way of preventing people from getting the material without paying for it? If not, is there a way to graft on such a system? Only then would studios even consider using it. Otherwise, it's silly wishful thinking on the part of people who are, shall we say, used to the convenience of downloading whatever they want and so invent reasons for everything to be on P2P.
My mind is having a hard time deciding what to be more disgusted at. Lava-surfing and grassy-hill-rolling Anakin or people actually volunteering to be a part of this universe o' crap?
At least we got some neat videogames out of the Matrix trilogy.
Well, that's a valid point. But then again, if people's civil rights were being violated by drug busts, wouldn't there be a much louder outcry over it? It appears the same is now true of the Patriot Act.
The only real problem I have with the criticism of people showing up at your door is that the police already have those very same abilities when it comes to suspected drug dealers and such.
When put in that context, I don't see why it's such a big deal to give anti-terrorist investigators the same abilities already afforded to local law enforcement. I mean, the potential for abuse is the same, right? Yet police go crashing into houses all the time without public outcry.
Interestingly, the release would be early enough for Apple to actually push out a whole new release before Longhorn next year. 10.5 would be a very interesting release because it would be Apple's "official" reaction to Longhorn. Imagine two whole OS X releases in the time Longhorn has sat in an alpha state. What is Microsoft doing all this time?
I may get modded down for this (I know, it's a cliched phrase), but I'm getting incredibly sick and tired of these CherryOS articles and their "stolen code" discussions.
Slashdot and its readership are quite happy to demonize the RIAA when it goes after infringers of its copyright. Posters will go so far to defend piracy that they will even initiate pointless discussions about how copyright infringement isn't theft (it is, because you are depriving them of revenue they would otherwise be receiving), and that it's just a cultural movement to take intellectual property. There are entire belief systems and mindsets invented to justify this piracy.
But since the very first CherryOS article, everyone has been discussing "stolen GPL code." People have even suggested legal action. Note that when I refer to Slashdot's opinion, I'm talking about the majority opinion as filtered through the upmods and discussion threads.
So, let's break it down:
Slashdot is okay with copyright infringement and P2P piracy. But it is not okay with copyright infringement of GPL code.
Slashdot is okay with pursuing legal action against CherryOS on behalf of PearPC authors. But it is not okay with the RIAA pursuing legal action against infringers to protect its own property (and let's not forget Slashdot was suggesting they do this in 2000 during the Napster lawsuit).
P2P copyright infringment is not theft. But taking GPL code is "stealing" it.
I'm sorry, but I find this highly amusing. Four years of non-stop demonization of *AA and pro-piracy articles, and every time there's an incident of possible GPL infringement, suddenly everyone is on the side of intellectual property and the law. Look at all this talk of testing the GPL in court! Since when was everyone a fan of intellectual property all the sudden? Oh, that's right, when it didn't have to do with protecting the piracy you've grown accustomed to the convenience of all these years. It makes the pro-piracy opinions around here appear even more self-serving than they already were.
Note to those preparing to reply with "That's not everyone on Slashdot" replies, I know. If none of the above applies to you, congratulations. But it applies to the majority, and the nature of Slashdot's posting system tends to encourage groupthink. And so, you get these ridiculous double standards that people haven't full thought through.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't matter what someone does after the copyright infringement. The point is that in both cases, intellectual property is being taken against the spirit of the license it was released under. Some of us simply like to point out how hypocritical it is of Slashdot and its readers to be up in arms over intellectual property law and prop up piracy at most every opportunity, then turn around and get angry when GPL code is taken. If piracy is okay or is a "gray area," then so is violating the GPL.
I use Office 2000, which uses normal looking widgets. However, I have seen Office XP/2003, which uses the exact same widgets Windows has, but with some outlines drawn around them.
Visual Studio? The same. And it didn't even do it before Visual Studio 2003.
Internet Explorer? Here, you're either trolling or confused because Internet Explorer uses native Windows widgets.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Windows apps all use the same native widgets. And by the way, even the apps that draw their own widgets aren't loading entire GUI libraries into memory to do it, like in the OSS world, which was another part of my point. Why do I have to load up four ways to manage button widgets in RAM just to get work done because people want "choice"? I just want to get my work done without losing all my memory to the reinvented (and reinvented, and reinvented) wheel.
I've not used Windows seriously since Win98
Then how can you speak honestly about the experience of using Windows? Copy-paste is universally acknowledged as a major issue on OSS desktops. I experience the problem all the time when trying to work with multiple apps. Never have the problem in Windows or OS X.
Uuhh, like Windows 9x and Windows NT?
No. NT was intended only for businesses and servers. The consumer product was always 9x. With the introduction of XP, Microsoft has unified the codebase.
Anybody who says Windows is easier to use than Linux is simply wrong.
Look, I despise Windows, too. But even an objective examination of the ease of use between Windows and Linux has Windows far ahead, from widget consistency to copy-paste to app installation/uninstallation to system updates.
That's true, but it's nowhere near how bad it is in Linux. If your only standard for comparison is the way Windows looks, desktop Linux is never going to improve. And regardless, the vast majority of Windows apps DO look the same and use native widgets, have buttons in the same place, have the same menu items, use the same keyboard shortcuts, and can copy-paste damn near anything between each other. The Linux offerings don't come close, because they won't standardize.
Because enough people switch and use the fork that now we have yet another platform we have to support. The community's energy and momentum is spread thin on countless source forks rather than focused on a few really great projects.
No chance of the reverse from this crowd?
Each claim should be evaluated regardless of messenger. If the claims don't make sense, there's no reason to immediately dismiss them because you know you're right. Instead, address them. Yes, there are cases where Linux is insecure and unscalable. There are cases where it is more secure and more scalable.
We should adopt more balanced opinions around here. Unfortunately, what will happen is that people will counter the article's reactionary opinion with an opposite reactionary opinion.
What "risks" are Open Source taking? What things am I risking by running Debian?
In fact, it's a negative thing to say using OSS is taking a risk. Pointy haired bosses don't want to take risks, they want to use what's safe and reliable.
"Risk-takers" is not the image you want to portray of the OSS community. I get what you were trying to say, but there should be a different choice of words.
Forks ARE bad things. The mantra of "choice" isn't applicable to every situation. Standardizing on a platform is difficult enough in the Linux world. Forking things whenever one of the devs feels wronged (usually how these things get started) just increases the confusion and non-interoperability between multiple platforms. It's one more to support and worry about.
Desktop Linux has, for the most part, stagnated because KDE and GNOME won't merge into one mega-standard. Instead, we must continue to install both entire desktop environments just to comfortably run each other's apps. It's absolutely ridiculous the way the wheel gets reinvented several times over. If you're running GNOME, a KDE app, Mozilla Firefox, and OpenOffice, you've got at least four major libraries now sitting in your memory, all doing the same things but with different code, implementing their own GUI widgets. You're never going to have desktop standards that way.
Apple gets a lot of grief here and I guess elsewhere for their 1970s or 1980s attitude towards mice design and usage, and I think they deserve every bit of it.
It's not "1970s or 1980s attitude," it's basic ideas of usability and simplicity. I have a two-button mouse that I use for OS X. Honestly, I never use the right-mouse button because the menus it brings up are always available at the top menu, anyway.
It's not a point against it, it's a point in its favor that OS X is so advanced you only need one button to use it and accomplish the same thing that takes Windows two buttons and Linux three.
The story says "jaws will drop." Apple will probably have the left button take up most of the mouse, with the right moust button being shifted more to the side.
I wouldn't be surprised if a scrolling track pad was added on the left of the mouse where the thumb rests, because an ugly "scroll wheel" on top wouldn't be aesthetic. Not to mention how unusable it is. Two-button mice strain my tendons, especially that scroll wheel. I actually prefer one-button mice when I can use them because I can easily rest my finger in the center of the mouse. Your hand feels amazingly more comfortable when you do that. And, of course, Ctrl-click does the same damn thing. But the point is you don't even need the right mouse button on OS X because the functionality is exposed elsewhere. I think it's a point in OS X's favor that it's so functional, you don't even need two buttons to use it--just one.
Expect Apple computers to continue to ship with one-button mice by default. The two-button mouse will just be another upgrade option when you buy it online, or something you can pick up on your way out of the retail store.
No so fast. IE7 still won't be standards-compliant. That won't matter to most end-users, of course, but it matters to me as a web developer.
From article:
Partner sources say Microsoft is wavering on the extent to which it plans to support CSS2 with IE 7.0. Developers have been clamoring for Microsoft to update its CSS support to support the latest W3C standards for years. But Microsoft is leaning toward adding some additional CSS2 support to IE 7.0, but not embracing the standard in its entirety, partners say.
My only question is...um, why the fuck not? Even Apple's Safari is already plunging ahead with preliminary CSS3 support.
I predict IE7's "additional support for CSS2" will really just mean fixing the major box model and table width bugs and not changing anything else.
Thanks for playing the role of "Angry, Anti-social, Elitist Perl Snob." The Slahsdot user known as hyperstation alone determines who is a programmer and who is not in this world, and goddammit, if you've read a PHP book, you're still not a programmer! You're not supposed to learn anything by reading about it in a book. Instead, you must know it through Slashdot discussions and online tutorials, or you're just not a "real" programmer. For instance, I learned Perl through osmosis by sleeping on an O'Reilly book. Brothers and sisters, I have arrived.
Uh...what was homophobic about it? Do you know what homophobia is?
But if you use the Bittorrent network, anyone else could grab those files that you're downloading, without having paid for them. Granted, they'd be DRMed, but I doubt the studios will go for having their DRM files floating around all over the place instead of directly to the person they sold it to.
Basically, what I'm asking is how they would be able to implement a payment system through Bittorrent rather than just throwing DRM-ed files out onto the network for everyone to hack at.
I forget, are we for or against intellectual property rights on Tuesdays?
It might, however, be just what movie studios and record labels need to market and distribute their own content efficiently on the Web
Now why would it be in their best interest to distribute movies and music so that everyone else could get it without compensating them for it? Is this more of the silly "free advertising" argument? Seriously, how would you expect them to get paid if they did that? I guess a recording artist is expected to spend three months renting out a studio and equipment, just to have the music blasted onto Bittorrent where he won't get paid for his work.
Are you telling me the Bittorrent system has DRM or some other way of preventing people from getting the material without paying for it? If not, is there a way to graft on such a system? Only then would studios even consider using it. Otherwise, it's silly wishful thinking on the part of people who are, shall we say, used to the convenience of downloading whatever they want and so invent reasons for everything to be on P2P.
My mind is having a hard time deciding what to be more disgusted at. Lava-surfing and grassy-hill-rolling Anakin or people actually volunteering to be a part of this universe o' crap?
At least we got some neat videogames out of the Matrix trilogy.
There's a little difference with that analogy, which is that people who smoke cigarettes are physically addicted to them.
Well, that's a valid point. But then again, if people's civil rights were being violated by drug busts, wouldn't there be a much louder outcry over it? It appears the same is now true of the Patriot Act.
Shouldn't it read, "Alternative Browsers Vulnerable To Cross-Browser Spyware Attack?"
The only real problem I have with the criticism of people showing up at your door is that the police already have those very same abilities when it comes to suspected drug dealers and such.
When put in that context, I don't see why it's such a big deal to give anti-terrorist investigators the same abilities already afforded to local law enforcement. I mean, the potential for abuse is the same, right? Yet police go crashing into houses all the time without public outcry.
Interestingly, the release would be early enough for Apple to actually push out a whole new release before Longhorn next year. 10.5 would be a very interesting release because it would be Apple's "official" reaction to Longhorn. Imagine two whole OS X releases in the time Longhorn has sat in an alpha state. What is Microsoft doing all this time?
I may get modded down for this (I know, it's a cliched phrase), but I'm getting incredibly sick and tired of these CherryOS articles and their "stolen code" discussions.
Slashdot and its readership are quite happy to demonize the RIAA when it goes after infringers of its copyright. Posters will go so far to defend piracy that they will even initiate pointless discussions about how copyright infringement isn't theft (it is, because you are depriving them of revenue they would otherwise be receiving), and that it's just a cultural movement to take intellectual property. There are entire belief systems and mindsets invented to justify this piracy.
But since the very first CherryOS article, everyone has been discussing "stolen GPL code." People have even suggested legal action. Note that when I refer to Slashdot's opinion, I'm talking about the majority opinion as filtered through the upmods and discussion threads.
So, let's break it down:
I'm sorry, but I find this highly amusing. Four years of non-stop demonization of *AA and pro-piracy articles, and every time there's an incident of possible GPL infringement, suddenly everyone is on the side of intellectual property and the law. Look at all this talk of testing the GPL in court! Since when was everyone a fan of intellectual property all the sudden? Oh, that's right, when it didn't have to do with protecting the piracy you've grown accustomed to the convenience of all these years. It makes the pro-piracy opinions around here appear even more self-serving than they already were.
Note to those preparing to reply with "That's not everyone on Slashdot" replies, I know. If none of the above applies to you, congratulations. But it applies to the majority, and the nature of Slashdot's posting system tends to encourage groupthink. And so, you get these ridiculous double standards that people haven't full thought through.